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Trevor Dolbypublisher
Overrated Strictly Come Dancing was just about the most overrated cultural and political event of the year.
Underrated 1. Philip Roth's latest Indignation was inexplicably ignored. Beautifully written, tempered with calculated anger. The critics, those who could be bothered, suggest Roth is publishing too much and quality is suffering. Balderdash.
2. Leonard Cohen at the O2: poet, composer, singer, arranger, mystic, legend, icon. One watches and listens in wonder. Generations hence will envy us.
Ronald Doreprofessor of economics
Underrated Peer Steinbrueck's speech to the Bundestag comprehensively denouncing Anglo-Saxon capitalism in September—a sign that the one country which has a legally entrenched alternative form of capitalism, may actually be going to stay that way. Having employee representatives share power with shareholder representatives on company supervisory boards really does make a difference. If Steinbrueck's speech reflects an emerging German consensus, the existence of a real "alternative model" could affect the shape that Chinese capitalism eventually takes and so have world-history significance.
Jean Hannah Edelsteinjournalist
Underrated 1. NPR's "Planet Money" podcast. A crisp and clear daily half-hour dissection of the global economy for those of us who aren't finance wonks. If you're not already a devotee, you'll want to earmark a weekend soon to catch up on the backlog.
2. McCain Blogette. Despite being a die-hard Obama supporter, I am only slightly embarrassed to concede that I found Meghan McCain's blog weirdly likeable— she was the only bright spot in her father's dirty and disorganised presidential campaign. I think she's more likely than Sarah Palin to be the first female Republican in the oval office.
Overrated Major Barbara at the National. Great acting, but the overall effect was more saccharine and less controversial than I suspect Shaw intended.
David H Edgertonprofessor of history
Underrated The failure to do much about climate change. It is exactly 20 years since Thatcher made the environment a central issue for mainstream politics, and yet, British CO2 emissions have decreased only slightly since 1988. Since the election of New Labour in 1997 British CO2 emissions have increased. That this is hardly appreciated is a tribute to the power of masterly inactivity, which disguises inaction with repeated expressions of concern and promises of future action.
Brian Enomusician
Underrated 1. Newly rich Asian countries collecting land in the third world for growing food for themselves. Korea's Daewoo corporation has leased half the arable land in Madagascar, an island approximately the size of France, and the Chinese government is buying or leasing similarly large tracts elsewhere. In the near future, developing countries will find themselves in competition with highly capitalised Asian companies not only for land, but, perhaps more importantly, for the water which will need to be diverted away from their own lands for irrigation.
2. Closer to home, the government continues to undermine civil liberties, wheeling out anti-terrorist legislation, for example, whenever it needs a quick and dirty solution. Especially worrying was the freezing of the assets of Icelandic banks. At the time this legislation was enacted objectors predicted such "mission creep" but were reassured by the government that the new powers would only be used in the most extreme circumstances.
3. Another really significant cultural event was the generative music software called "Bloom" that Peter Chilvers and myself made for the iPhone.
Duncan Fallowellwriter & novelist
Overrated Richard Rogers—I can't believe Mayor Johnson is still giving him house-room as an architectural adviser. Rogers's designs for Heathrow Terminal Five and the Chelsea Barracks development demonstrate what crud the man comes up with these days when he stops waffling to committees. It really is time that British architecture moved beyond The Girder Show.
Underrated The paintings of Fiona Rae, a boudoir Matisse for the 21st century (I don't own any).
Jonathan Fenbyjournalist
Underrated China signed its first agreement with GE Leasing for 25 airliners built in the PRC. They may be only regional jets with 70-90 seats but this is a good indication of the mainland's move up the value chain which, once the current crisis ebbs, will be a big factor in the global economy.
Niall Fergusonhistorian
Overrated The Beijing Olympics left me completely cold. "One-party state organises spectacular opening ceremony" is a "Dog bites man" event.
Underrated The most underrated event, by contrast, was the resumption of civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which will claim many more lives than the global financial crisis.
Eamonn Fingletonwriter & journalist
Underrated The US trade deficit. For the fourth year running, the US current account deficit last year (2008) probably exceeded $700bn. This means that since 2004 alone America increased its net foreign indebtedness by nearly one-quarter of annual GDP. Its trade deficit has increased sevenfold since 1989—and has done so at a time when Japan's surplus has more doubled. America's trade weakness has not only greatly complicated the world financial crisis but—far more important in the long run—it signals the end of western leadership of the world community. To close the gap America must sell more abroad. But how? Its service exports are notoriously weak while, thanks to outsourcing, its erstwhile enormous manufacturing base is now down to a mere 11 per cent of the economy. To make ends meet, America will have to increase its manufacturing workforce by nearly 40 per cent. Even then, all the new jobs will have to be at the top end—meaning ultra capital-intensive and knowhow-intensive jobs that are now largely the prerogative of the Japanese and Germans. Even if American policymakers understood the scale of the problem, they lack the most basic tools to address it.
David Flemingenvironmentalist & writer
Underrated I have just spent a day and a night with a slim and beautiful book. It took me for a walk in the woods. It has recipes for free food—squirrel casserole, rabbit in cider, roe deer liver, pigeon breast with steamed nettles, beech-leaf gin and fry-ups of penny-bun mushrooms. And it is about chair-makers, work-horses, charcoal fires, the sounds of the night, and a deep knowledge and love of the forest. Publication of Ben Law's The Woodland Year has happened out of sight of civilisation and its discontents, but it is a wonderful reassurance that in several places in England, perhaps in a wood near you, things are going just fine.
Peter Florencefounder of the Hay festival
Underrated However many awards it wins, Australian-Vietnamese-American writer Nam Le's debut story collection The Boat deserves more and more readers. Worthy winner of the 2008 Dylan Thomas prize, it is the most elegant, acute fiction I've read for years. Fflur Dafydd's compelling novel Twenty Thousand Saints, translated and intriguingly adapted from her Welsh-language original also merits five or six hours of pleasure and attention. But the year's greatest bookworld triumph is the arrival of the Sony E-reader: functional marvel, aesthetic treasure.
Carlo Géblernovelist & writer
Overrated This year's winner of our premier prize for prose, the Man Booker, was The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga. I found that the voice of Adiga's narrator, a semi-literary villager in the big city, did not convince me. Nor did I believe the author really knew about the life experiences of servants or the rural poor.
Underrated Sebastian Barry's The Secret Scripture, was shortlisted for the same prize. This novel's compass is certainly narrower than that of The White Tiger but my belief in the domestic and psychiatric Irish world Barry presents never faltered for a second. It's a far better book so why didn't the judges pick it? It's been muttered that having given it to the Irishwoman Anne Enright last year they didn't want to give it to another Mick.
Maggie Geenovelist
Underrated 1. Jacob Ross's wonderful novel Pynter Bender. Musical, sinuous prose, confident storytelling, vivid, unforgettable images of life in the Caribbean. Some mainstream papers unaccountably missed this stunning debut novel by a master of the short story. Like Bernardine Evaristo's totally original, witty and harrowing Blonde Roots, this book should have been on the shortlist for a major prize; there is still time.
2. The way people have always been uneasy about public cruelty towards others, even if it makes them laugh at the time. What happens on reality shows with "public vote" evictions, like Big Brother or I'm a Celebrity…? Nice people win. The Ross/Brand fiasco was a litmus test of public tolerance for unthinking arrogance and cruelty—I say unthinking because I do not suppose either man meant to be cruel, they have just been encouraged to see only themselves as real, isolated in the bright bubble of performance from the world outside where living individuals can be hurt and humiliated. As a nation we said "No, we don't like it," which is evidently a different reaction from that of many programme-makers. Perhaps they will now make slightly different programmes.
3. The intelligence (and emotions) of non-human animals. A growing range of scientific and popular publications on the subtle behaviour of crows, ravens and jays should make you wonder what that line of birds on the rooftop is saying about you as you walk past.
David Goldblattwriter
Underrated The Igfest (festival of ingenious games) held in Bristol in November is one of a growing band of outdoor, immersive game events. Teams played a version of three-dimensional snakes and ladders, in multistorey car parks; the city streets and squares of medieval Bristol became the location for an all evening treasure hunt for hundreds of players; and a man in a GPS-linked moose head walked from the Forest of Dean to the city docks while we tried to photograph him before he photographed us. Over a long weekend. thousands of people had the opportunity to turn their city into a playground, engage in all kinds of laughter and tomfoolery and learn a whole lot about strategy and tactics, co-operation and competition along the way. We aren't going to be doing quite as much consuming on the high street as we have been, but with Igfest and its like, we might get to do a lot more playing.
Robert Gore-Langtonarts writer
Overrated The James Bond film Quantum of Solace. Daniel Craig is a fine actor but even in a dinner jacket he still manages to look like a hod-carrying navvy from Runcorn, not a secret agent. What happened to the witty scripts, the John Barry music and the exotic romance of the first few films? And why are there not good baddies anymore? The whole thing is now a giant car advert, designed for a nation addicted to Top Gear.
Underrated The collapse of bee colonies in Britain and the rest of the world. Bees pollinate a vast proportion of what we eat and they (along with the kelp forests, sea birds, most species of fish and goodness knows what else) are dying out. Colony collapse disorder is on the way—a catastrophic indicator of the way things are going on the planet generally.
David G Greendirector of Civitas
Underrated The government's plans for a single equality bill have been presented as no more than a sensible tidying up of 116 separate pieces of legislation so that "everyone can understand" the law. In truth the bill undermines the fundamental precepts of a free society. It has been axiomatic that people should not be discriminated against on grounds of race, religion or gender. The circumstances of birth—whether the religion or race bequeathed by parents or the culture and economic conditions they provided—should not limit our potential to bring out the best in ourselves. Contrary to this long heritage, the single equality bill is a device for giving preferential treatment to individuals because of their unearned characteristics. It legalises and encourages group discrimination while denouncing it and pretending to ban it.
Mark Hannamformer investment managerf
Underrated The best show I saw this year was "I Want to Believe" by Cai Guo-Qiang at the Guggenheim in New York. The gallery was filled with beautifully made work that took full advantage of the high atrium, the large side galleries and the curved rising walkway. The work was interesting as well as beautiful: it was provocative, curious, full of humour but also of pathos.
Overrated The more a person knows about a subject the less satisfied they tend to be when this subject is covered on the news. For those of us who profess some expertise in financial markets this has been a highly unsatisfying year. Media coverage of the financial markets has been simplistic, sensational and confusing: nowhere more so than at the BBC. Robert Peston's attempts to explain the "credit crunch" to the nation should not go un-remarked. He wins my vote as the most overrated commentator on financial matters. (The most underrated: Samuel Brittan's calm and erudite columns in the Financial Times.)
Johann Harijournalist
Overrated: Giles Coren's hate emails to the Times subeditors. Oh, how media land chuckled! A spoiled Times columnist—born of a Times columnist, marinated in every privilege possible since birth—spewed more than a thousand words of bile at subeditors. Why? Because they took the letter "a" out of his copy. And we are all supposed to act as if this vicious abuse is hilarious, and even "brave." Well, I don't think puffed-up rich kids shitting on people who earn a fifth of their income for working twice as hard is "brave." I think it stinks.
Chris Haskinsfarmer & Labour peer
Overrated The two most overrated events of the year were the wisdom of the economists and the British successes on the Beijing Olympics. As late as September most of the financial experts ridiculed Alistair Darling for suggesting that the economy was entering its worst crisis for 60 years. In less than three months even the driest of them, like Martin Wolf of the Financial Times, were advocating levels of public ownership which would have left Keynes turning in his grave. As for the Olympics, whilst Britain scooped medals in marginal activities such as sailing, cycling and swimming, only one gold medal was won in the event which really matters—athletics.
Underrated The most underrated event of the year was the promotion of Hull City to the Premier League. Pundits forecast that they wouldn't win a match. Yet they have already, amongst others, beaten Arsenal, Tottenham, Newcastle and West Ham.
David Hermanwriter & TV producer
Overrated 1. The US election. Of course, it was a historic victory. In a nation whose history has been dominated by race and persecution, the election of a mixed-race candidate is hugely significant. However, the US media coverage went on as if the story of black America over the last 40 years was a narrative from Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement (Moses) to Obama (Joshua), all told in biblical terms. The disastrous experience of urban black America from the 1960s to the present was invisible. Not biblical enough, perhaps? We will have to turn to Philip Roth's accounts of Newark, and to The Wire.
2. Three terrible films: Charlie Kaufman's rambling Synecdoche: New York, the obscene The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and the hyped There Will be Blood.
Underrated Only one reviewer (Adam Tooze) appreciated the originality of Mark Mazower's bold history Hitler's Empire, the latest attempt by Mazower to place Nazism in a larger and much darker European context, running from Bismarck to the 1950s.
Ernst Hillebrandpolitical scientist
Underrated Kosovo independence. Pandora's box has been opened, and, in time, many nasty civil wars and ethnic cleansing campaigns will have popped out of it. There are many possible Kosovos in the world, and its birth process will be marked by blood, sweat and tears—especially in Africa, but also in Asia. Great respect hence to the author of 2008's most underrated political essay: Jerry Z Muller's "Us and them" in Foreign Affairs's March/April issue, on ethnic nationalism: "it is galvanised by modernisation, and in one form or another, it will drive global politics for generations to come."
Donald Hirschsocial policy expert
Overrated Chancellor Brown's announcement of the abolition of the 10p tax band was arguably one of the most underrated events of 2007, but when implemented a year later by Chancellor Darling suddenly became one of the most overrated events of 2008. Painted as the greatest social injustice since the poll tax, this measure took a maximum of just under a fiver a week from low earners without children—certainly an injustice, but tame by comparison with other ways that these people have been clobbered in recent years. They have lost a lot more by the failure to uprate tax allowances properly, by the fall in relative wages and by growing job insecurity, For those who lose their jobs, out-of-work benefits have not been raised in real terms since 1981. Public outrage on this group's behalf is overdue, but weirdly selective.
Underrated By comparison with this one-off piece of meanness, the government's new plans for benefit claimants has been vastly underrated. The plan is to make most disabled people and lone parents look for work, with parents of small children required to have "action plans" and "skills checks" and to go on training courses if they are found wanting. In this brave new world, thousands will be forced to go out and look for jobs just at the time when there aren't any. And oddly for a spin-obsessed government, they will be reclassified as "unemployed" at the precise moment when rising jobless figures have become a political headache for the first time in 16 years.
Peter Hitchensjournalist
Overrated The election of Barack Obama as president of the US. Obama is treated as if he were a secular messiah, so much so that 17,000 people in Dallas once applauded him vigorously when he announced he was pausing in the middle of his speech to blow his nose. He is in truth a ruthless but otherwise ordinary machine politician from Chicago, that city of machine politics, where he has made the necessary obeisance to the Daley organisation. Prepare to be disappointed.
Underrated The ousting of Thabo Mbeki as president of South Africa, and the splitting of the African National Congress. These were much larger events than they appeared at the time. The complacent post-Mandela view of South Africa as a utopian post-revolutionary "rainbow nation" will not be sustainable for very much longer. The likely arrival of Jacob Zuma as president will make this disturbingly clear.
Robert Irwinwriter & broadcaster
Underrated The appearance of the Polish director, Wojciech Has's The Saragossa Manuscript on DVD. I first saw an abridged and mutilated version of this amazing film in the 1960s and since then have been waiting for the release of a restored version. I believe that Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead paid for its reconstitution (which has been released on DVD by Mr Bongo Films). Bunuel, Coppola and Scorsese have described it as their favourite film. It is a masterpiece of storytelling and cinematography. Cabalists, inquisitors, gypsies, bandits, duellists, harem princesses, priests and madmen feature in a series of tales all boxed one within another in an 19th-century Spanish setting. But I did not see a single review of the DVD.
Pico Iyertravel writer
Overrated The racial liberation represented by Barack Obama. The beauty and power of Obama's vision and his background is that he's far too mixed-up and global and distinctive to be pushed into any racial categories. What Obama represents is not new opportunities for black Americans, but for white—to expand their sense of who they are, and to recognise that most things do not fit into simple categories of "us" and "them."
Underrated 1. The tactical wisdom of the Dalai Lama. Nearly everyone thinks of him as a sweet, good man who is full of kind grandfatherly counsel but is out of his depth in taking on the brutal leadership in Beijing. But he's the longest-ruling leader in the world (68 years and counting), has been dealing with China's leaders since 1949 and is an undeluded realist. China will not give Tibet independence—it has no reason to; and any violent confrontation with the Chinese will bring only more suffering to Tibetans (and Chinese) in Tibet and make any long-term solution impossible. It will also make it hard for Tibetans to continue to be spiritual (rather than political) refugees sheltered by India. The very fact that the Tibetan leader frankly announced, near the end of the year, that his policy had failed and that he would leave the decision-making to other Tibetans was reminder both of his transparency, and of his ability to remain one step ahead of the Chinese.
2. Werner Herzog has been so strange and so extreme for so long—so much our seeming global-village idiot—that we've forgotten just how original and even beautiful his films can be. Grizzly Man should have reminded us that Herzog is a kind of gnarled Nabokov for our times, bringing a dry, dark, unillusioned European eye to American innocence and hopefulness; but in his recent Encounters at the End of the World he takes us somewhere even deeper and more curious. The culture world has grown so tame and homogeneous—the spread of blogs and websites not increasing our individuality but diminishing it—that droll and visionary lunacy is more desperately needed than ever.
To comment on this article visit First Drafts,Prospect's blog
Prospect's "overrated and underrated" events of the year are divided alphabetically, by author surname, into four parts: click here to read parts one, two, three and four.
